


Fifty Shades of Fakery

by emeraldine087



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 2018 Stony MCU Bingo, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Office, Ambiguous/Open Ending, BAMF Tony Stark, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Humor, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, M/M, Not Beta Read, Pre-Slash, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers POV, The Author Regrets Nothing, stony cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 03:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14803700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldine087/pseuds/emeraldine087
Summary: Steve Rogers is a new hire in a mammoth tech company and the focus of a top executive's unwelcome sexual advances. He's just about at the end of his rope in pushing the sleazebag away, when he gets an unlikely and unexpected rescue from the reclusive--and sexy--Chief Technical Officer of the company, and finds himself with an insta-boyfriend before the day is out.Posing as Tony Stark's fake boyfriend is not going to be a hardship. At all.For the "Fake Relationship" square on my 2018 Stony MCU Bingo Card.





	Fifty Shades of Fakery

**Author's Note:**

> This fills the Y4 square in my 2018 Stony MCU Bingo Card - FAKE RELATIONSHIP.
> 
> And I am DONE with the Bingo. I cut it close but I made it!!!!!! Props to me!!!! YES! YES!!! *does the happy dance* I feel like this is a real achievement because I beat the deadline (31 May 2018) despite hectic stuff at work and currently being sick with asthma!!! Really, even without the badge that symbolizes completion of my participation, this will still be a source of bragging rights for me. ^_^
> 
> This features an AU-No Powers, AU-Office Setting because I just needed an AU in my Bingo fills and another Stony cuteness to keep me pushing on until Avengers 4. Yes, I AM still depressed over IW--I don't think I'll get over it.
> 
> Just a few reminders: Not beta-read so for any SPaG issues, please give me a heads-up so they can be corrected.
> 
> ENJOY!  
> \---

Five days into Steve Rogers’ new job as a Market Analyst for SHIELD Solutions, he got hit on by the Vice President and Chief Finance Officer. It was something that didn’t usually happen to him because he had always been the keep-to-himself, wallflower type, but it made him feel kind of dirty nonetheless. If he had not needed this job so badly, he would have tendered his resignation, effective immediately. As it was, he forced himself to push it to the very back of his mind and hope that it would never happen again, and really, try to avoid the other party like they were a carrier of the black plague.

“Ugh, Pierce is such a _sleazebag_ ,” Steve’s first friend in the company, Pepper Potts, executive assistant to the Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, said with an over-the-top gag and shudder. “You should have brought it up with your boss because we have a policy for that, you know,” remarked Pepper, completely indignant in Steve’s behalf.

“I haven’t even been employed _a week_ , Pep; I don’t want to cause problems for my boss, and he already complains every chance he gets about Finance cutting Marketing’s budget,” Steve replied, forking the remaining pudding in his cup absent-mindedly. He didn’t want to have to ruin Pepper’s lunch hour, too. Being the new guy in the mammoth company, he was lucky enough to have found someone as kind as Pepper who was willing to eat with—or even talk to—him.

“Yeah I can imagine Phil’s hands being tied with threats of more budget cuts,” shrugged Pepper, thoughtfully poking a limp fry at the ketchup they were trying to share. Tucking loose strands of auburn hair behind an ear, she said, “Pierce is really a jackass—you know he also tried to come on to _me_ when I was new to the company? Yeah—I think it was on my third month here when he said something suggestively crass. He thinks he’s God’s gift to men and women, alike, because he’s rich, and he probably thinks working class people are all stripped-for-cash bloodhounds or something.” She leaned closer to Steve so nobody could eavesdrop on their conversation. Alexander Pierce might have strategically-situated spies all over the place; one could never be too sure.

“Jeez… Well… what happened? How did you deal with it then?” Steve asked, mightily interested now. If he was going to have to beat off the sleazy brass with a stick, he wanted to know how to handle it and possibly keep his job at the same time.

“Told my boss about it,” he said with a smug smile. “I’m assuming _he_ did something to put Pierce back in his place because the douchebag never tried to come on to me again after that one time.”

“Lucky you,” bemoaned Steve, poking a fry at their ketchup and shoving it into his mouth with an expression of unmistakable dejection on his face.

He’s actually never met Pepper’s boss—Anthony Stark—yet because the man was always on travel to their R&D facilities or was always working from home, devising the cutting-edge tech that SHIELD was becoming known for, but Steve had heard that the CTO, the youngest executive of SHIELD, was deeply respected around the organization and was on the fastest track to be the head honcho if only he cared one whit for office politics. Hell, he couldn’t even be bothered to pose for official company photos much less care about kissing the Board’s collective ass.

It wasn’t that Steve hated the head of his department—he hasn’t been in the company long enough to make any solid judgments—but he’d heard that that his boss’ boss, Victoria Hand—the Vice President and Chief Market Officer, was _nothing_ like Pepper’s boss. Steve thought he could handle a superior who marched to the beat of his own drum better than a Dominatrix go-getter, corporate ladder-scaler—like Steve had gotten the impression Phil’s boss was like.

Well, at least he didn’t have a _sexual harasser_ for a department head, like Pierce. Steve supposed it could have been worse. 

“Don’t you have a girlfriend? You should, like, take her here a couple times, just make sure to parade her around and tell people that you’re in a committed relationship,” advised Pepper. “I think it was Natasha who’d told me before that Pierce doesn’t like hitting on people that are spoken for.” Natasha Romanoff was another one of Pepper’s close friends in the company; she worked in HR—most likely in trying to compromise or pay off some of Pierce’s poor harassment victims, which was probably why she knew so much about Pierce’s M.O. because word on the street was that the head of Human Resources was deep and comfy in Pierce’s pocket. If Steve ever rubbed Pierce wrong, he would be out of a job before he could scream ‘sexual harassment’.

“Why doesn’t he hit on people who are taken?” Steve asked, trying to divert the conversation away from his non-existent significant other.

Pepper snorted. “Maybe it’s ‘cause he doesn’t like sloppy seconds or something— _I dunno_ … I have better things to do with my time than psycho-analyze that creep. But _seriously_ , Steve, you _have_ to tell your boss about this. Because if that dipshit Pierce was able to get away, scot-free, with coming on to you that one time—because you’re wary of standing up to him and possibly losing your job—you can be pretty sure he’s going to try again. And again and again… Working in SHIELD is not perfect, but it can damn well be hellish if, on top of your work stress, you also have to deal with _that_.”

And ain’t that something to think about.

===

It all came to a head eleven days later, during the company anniversary gala.

Steve had tried his very best to avoid Pierce at all costs: keeping to himself by being hunched in his work station, slipping out last from the Marketing hive floor to take his lunch, secreting himself through boardrooms and fire exits to take his breaks, clocking out for the day along with a throng of other people, so he didn’t give Pierce the unwitting opportunity to corner him in isolated hallways or stairwells or have a sleazy word or two with him during chance encounters or after-meetings. For the most part, Steve was successful. He’d only ever had the absolute misfortune of seeing the guy and getting hit on whenever his division had budget- and financial model-related meetings.

But Pierce was cunning because he never tried to hit on Steve with the latter’s immediate boss, Phil, around. Though Steve had tried to make it so that he was never without Phil nearby, there were still the odd moments that Pierce checked him out or asked him something with an evident double entendre, and his boss was never around to see it first-hand. These moments, Steve suffered through, shaking Pierce off with the subtlest of brush-offs and the vaguest of threats—he didn’t want to full-on affront the Chief Finance Officer of the company, but he didn’t want Pierce to think that it was OK for Steve to get hit on either.

If he didn’t have a King’s ransom-worth of student and medical loans to pay off, he would’ve taken up his best friend, Bucky’s offer to work as counselor-orderly for that foundation where their common friend, Sam, also worked. He’d have taken a substantial pay cut, yes, but at least he wouldn’t be beating off sleazy vice presidents with a stick.

Unfortunately, there was no begging off from attending SHIELD Solutions’ 30th anniversary company gala, even for a newbie and lowly Market Analyst like himself. So, he’d dreaded going to the event for days despite his colleagues and new friends’ excitement. It was an opportunity to let their hair down, eat fine food and drink top shelf wines and liquor all at the company’s expense after all.

“We want to get Pierce _off_ Steve’s back, you know,” Natasha commented with a dubious tilt to her head while regarding Steve’s sartorial choices for the evening: a classic three-piece ensemble courtesy of another friend of theirs, Clint, who was from the IT department. “Not make him get a boner marveling at how delectable Steve looks in this suit. I thought you said this was a _shabby_ number, Clint. But I’m not seeing the shabbiness.” Natasha scowled, giving Steve’s get-up another critical eye.

“Well, it looked shabby on _me_!” Clint hissed in complaint. “How was I to know that this guy would look good wearing a damn _trash bag_?!”

Too late to slip away for a change of clothes now as the party was already well underway. Steve would probably attract more attention, trying to slip away and leave the party than staying and blending in.

“We should have asked you to stop taking a bath a week ago,” joked Pepper, swiping at the fringes of Steve’s blonde hair on his forehead before hooking her arm around his elbow to get him to marginally chill. “Where’s that girlfriend of yours that you could’ve brought along?”

“Non-existent,” lamented Steve, uncomfortably tugging on the hem of his coat. “Will your boss be making an appearance tonight?”

“He’s probably running late. Punctuality is never gonna be one of his virtues,” Pepper answered with a fond eye roll. “I mentioned your sleazebag problem to him—“

“—Aaaw Pep, you shouldn’t have,” groaned Steve. The last thing he wanted was to pit one Vice President against another. He wasn’t a damsel in distress; he could damn well take care of his sleazebag-admirer problem himself. “I’m not even part of your department. He’s probably thinking ‘how is this my concern?’”

“Seeing as he’s a Vice President of the same company where another Vice President is harassing you to within an inch of your virtue, then it becomes his concern,” retorted Pepper, taking a small sip of her flute of sparkling water.

If anything, that made Steve dread the rest of the night more.

Three speeches, two flutes of mildly alcoholic punch and several hundred uncomfortable tugs of the hemline of his coat later, Steve found himself seated at the bar with a tad harder drink in front of him. He’d told himself that he was going to allow himself this one drink and then haul ass back to the apartment he shared with Bucky before the night could get any more exciting. He’d dodged some proverbial bullets numerous times during the night, whenever he felt Pierce’s piercing stare bore several holes into him, but he always managed to give the interested Vice President the slip until the latter finally left the party a couple minutes ago.

“You look good enough to eat in that suit, Analyst,” came the oily voice of the last person Steve wanted an interaction with for the night, or for any time, really. Steve thought he was lucky like that. He’d thought Pierce had already turned in for the night, but now he had caught Steve unaware, relatively isolated and, if truth be told, slightly buzzed. He knew he should not have celebrated his short-lived luck by getting those last couple of drinks…

“I was just leaving, Sir,” Steve answered, preparing to vacate his seat.

“Leaving with someone?” Pierce asked, looking around self-importantly. “Or you could leave with _me_ ,” offered the douchebag of a man, arrogance oozing out of every word. “I bet you would look good out of that suit. Not to mention that that suit would look good adorning my floor.”

Before Steve could reply with something terribly offensive that would no doubt cost him his job, another voice—confidently silky, suave and sexy—piped in. “You’re barking up the wrong tree there, Alex. Because _Steve_ will be walking out of this party with _me_.”

Steve turned his head towards the direction of the voice so fast, he had whiplash. The sexy voice, unfortunately (or fortunately, really), came from an equally sexy body, meticulously dressed in a mandarin-collared deep blue suit that emphasized all the right places in the man’s tightly-muscled and sinewy form. And it wasn’t just the traffic-stopping body either, because the body was attached to a face that merited a double take in a pedestrian crossing in downtown Tokyo—with lips pursed into a roguish smirk, chin accented by a methodically-shaved van dyke, nose endearingly dimpled at the tip, brown hair swept into a messy style that wouldn’t look good on anyone else and eyes that— _wow_. _Those eyes_. Those eyes that made you want to be their sole focus—whiskey brown and lit up with amusement and single-mindedness.

“Tony! I didn’t think you would be climbing out of your cave tonight to grace us with your presence,” Pierce greeted sarcastically, offering the newcomer a hand which the latter jovially took. But only Steve could probably notice the feline grace and distrust in his movement. “And showing interest in Analyst here! You’re going to have to get in line, Stark.”

“Why would I have to get in line for my own _boyfriend_?”

If Steve had been drinking something, that was the very moment he would be sputtering and spraying half his drink across the bar.

“Y—your _boyfriend_?!” Pierce hissed. “Don’t we have a company policy against office romances?” The oily voice dripped with doubt and sarcasm.

The newcomer shrugged and answered, “ _I_ distinctly remember having a company policy against _sexual harassment_ , but _you_ don’t seem to give any premium to _that_ , so why don’t we just take it up with the CEO and the _Board_ then, if you feel aggrieved by the _blatant_ violation of company policy?” He asked, innocently batting his eyes that Steve couldn’t seem to stop gawking at.

When Pierce didn’t reply and just tensely clenched his jaw, Steve’s virtue-saver walked up to the bar, laced his fingers with Steve’s along with an intense look of wordless invitation, and tugged. “Well, if you’re done trying— _quite unsuccessfully_ —to get into _my boyfriend_ ’s pants, Pierce, I think we’ll go now,” Tony said, smiling at Pierce sweetly. But his eyes shone with a cold glint of warning to them:

_Hands off my stuff, jackass._

If Steve were a lesser man, he would have swooned, damsel in distress or no.

===

So, this was Pepper’s boss. _Anthony Stark_. Youngest Vice President of SHIELD Solutions. Genius. Recluse. Filthy Rich. Savior of Potential Sexual Harassment Victims.

Sexy Beast. Steve’s Fake Boyfriend.

“You OK?” Tony asked him when they were already in another section of the park, quite a ways from the events place at the heart of Central Park where the company gala was held. Tony angled his body towards Steve but kept his hands shoved deep in the front pockets of his trousers, which were tailored so perfectly to the man’s legs, he looked like he was born in them.

“Yeah I—uh—I’m OK,” Steve affirmed. “I had that handled,” he clarified in a rush. He didn’t want Tony Stark to think he was so vulnerable against sexual predators like Pierce that he needed saving. He didn’t need saving; he just needed to protect his job security. “But—um— _thanks_.” 

“Pepper told me about Pierce giving you a hard time. I hope you don’t mind that I stepped in when I did. The man badly needs a reality check. He thinks all pretty faces are the same, are after the same things, and can be lured using the same crass tactics,” Tony explained with a dismayed shake of his head.

The only thing that Steve picked up from all that was that Tony thought _he_ had a pretty face. He practically restrained himself from preening.

“Did you really have to say that, though?”

“Say what?”

“That you were my, my—um—boyfriend.” Steve suddenly had the hankering to giggle but stopped himself in time. This was going to be one hell of a story to tell Pepper over lunch, all right!

“Pierce detests me and the ground I walk on. He would’ve already had me discredited in the company if I weren’t so useful to them making loads of money,” relayed Tony with an amused half-smile that could only further highlight how good looking he was. “The most effective way to get you out of his sights is to make it like… you’re the hand-me-down of someone he hates.”

What? So they were boyfriends for precisely twenty minutes and now Steve was Tony Stark’s cast-offs— _what_?!   

“I guess that we’re breaking up already, huh? Is this your way of letting me down gently?” Steve asked before he could stop his mouth from running off on him. Shit, what the hell did he just say to Tony Stark?

He expected Tony to stare smugly at him, scowl at his very cheek, call him an opportunist or be mad at him for his apparent ungratefulness. The last thing he expected Tony to do was laugh good-naturedly at him. Which the latter did. “Don’t get me wrong, _beloved_ , but I just didn’t think you’d appreciate having an insta-boyfriend and would want to ditch me immediately. Whatever would your real significant other think?”

“They wouldn’t mind because—well—I have no…significant other,” clarified Steve with a shrug. “It’s just that… Pierce didn’t seem like he believed that you and I have a relationship,” reasoned Steve to argue in favor of— _what the hell_ was he trying to argue in favor of _anyway_? Did he really want to keep being Tony Stark’s fake boyfriend just to keep the sexual hound at bay? This was what he’d reduced himself to—ingratiating himself to one executive to get the other executive off his back?!

“Are you trying to imply what I think you’re trying to imply?”

“What am I trying to imply?” Steve was genuinely confused.

“That you want to keep playing the role of fake boyfriends to throw Pierce off,” articulated Tony with a curious arch to his eyebrows. Why Steve would think that even Tony’s eyebrows were _sexy_ was beyond him…

“ _Unless_ —you know— _you_ have a significant other who would very much mind,” prompted Steve, eyes growing wide in query. He suddenly wanted to know, _very much_ , if Tony Stark was single.

A fast-becoming-endearing soft smile blossomed on Tony’s face. “No. I don’t have a significant other.”

“So…?”

“So…” Tony trailed off with another one of his smirks. “I have to say this will be a first,” he continued, turning towards Steve again and then cocking his head to the path they were traversing before them. He looked at the ground thoughtfully, making Steve notice the man’s unusually long, thick and dark eyelashes. Great… not another thing to appreciate on Tony Stark’s exceptionally beautiful face!

The blond’s brows furrowed in confusion at that.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a relationship with someone that _Pepper_ actually likes,” said Tony. “You would be the first.”

Steve couldn’t have stopped himself from blushing then, not even if he’d managed to erase his face.

“Walk you to your car?” Tony offered with an after-you gesture to ease the tension that had wrapped itself heavily around the pair of them.

“Actually… I don’t have a car,” disclosed Steve, embarrassed. “I was going to take the subway home.”

“Come on then—I’ll drive you back to your place,” Tony amended his offer. “’Cause isn’t that exactly what proper boyfriends do in these circumstances? Drive their boyfriends home and see them safely to their doorstep?”

Steve cleared his throat for lack of better things to say in response to that. Why was it so warm around here so suddenly?!

The interior of the car only became uncomfortably silent when they stopped for a third red light since leaving Central Park. Steve felt the urge to say something— _anything_ , so as to make the silence less tense somehow. He’d complimented Tony for his amazing car, but that conversation died a quick death after less than a minute. Steve didn’t know anything about expensive cars, and the last thing he wanted to do was give Tony the impression that he was an airhead.

“It—um—it was great to finally meet you tonight,” Steve finally mustered the breath to re-initiate a conversation. “Pepper always talks about you.”

“Well, Pepper tells me about you, too,” Tony countered. “How you and your best friend used to be volunteer fire fighters, but that you still found the time to finish Art History in NYU and to care and provide for your mom who had cancer. She made you out to be like a real-life superhero or something. I hadn’t met you yet but, the way she talked about you? I could already tell that you were a good person, Steve,” Tony said, sparing a glance and a quirk of the corners of his lips at his companion on the passenger seat.

Pepper had vouched for him, and solely on that, Tony came to his aid to put Pierce in his place. Steve was a little bit in love with this man already.

Steve prepared to get off the car when they slid into the curb in front of his apartment building, heavily debating with himself if he was supposed to invite Tony up for a glass of water or something. (The man probably has a lifetime supply of _Evian_ and Steve would only be able to offer him water from the tap?! Why he was even thinking of offering stumped him!)

“Hey—uh—are you free tomorrow?” Tony asked, bringing Steve out of his severe mental reprimand.

Sure, Steve was free. It was a Saturday. “Y—yeah… Why?” He prayed to the god that his Mom used to pray to that that hadn’t sounded _hopeful_.

“I was going to invite you for breakfast,” Tony said, following it up quickly with, “because isn’t that what boyfriends are supposed to do? Grab a bite to eat together?”

“I was thinking we were only supposed to do this to lead Pierce on,” Steve remarked, mentally knocking himself upside the head for not simply accepting the invite and thanking the man. And mentally planning what to wear already. “Shouldn’t this work better if he’s actually around to see us be…together?”

“Oh,” Tony said with a subtle bite to his lower lip, which made Steve even guiltier. “Yeah, you’re right, of course… I—uh—I guess I’ll see you at the office on Monday then…”

Yeah, no—definitely not Steve’s proudest moment. He couldn’t believe he’d effectively _rejected_ Tony Stark’s invitation to go get breakfast with him!

“But I don’t know that much about you at all!” Steve hastily said, refusing to leave Tony’s car yet without getting that invitation extended to him again.

“Excuse me?”

“If we are to really make Pierce believe that we’re boy— _together_ , shouldn’t we try to get to know each other?” Steve fished. “You know… outside of work? Make us look more convincing…” If Steve employed a bit of his puppy dog eyes at Tony that Bucky had once said was damn near irresistible and could actually stop traffic, then nobody needed to know.

Tony tilted his head in thought. “Seems logical. So… breakfast tomorrow then?”

Yes!

“Sure thing, Mr. Stark.”

“ _Tony_ , please. Boyfriends are supposed to be on first-name basis.”

Steve gauchely nodded. He secretly loved it whenever Tony said that word: _boyfriends_. “See you tomorrow then.”

“Sweet dreams, Steve,” Tony said, leaning towards Steve.

The blond instinctively closed his eyes, anticipating a good night kiss, when the door thumped open making him jump slightly in his seat. What was he thinking?! Of course, Tony wouldn’t come on to him like that; he wasn’t anything like Alexander Pierce! Tony was a gentleman—edgy and unconventional, yes. But a gentleman, nonetheless.

To cover for his screw-up, Steve inched out of the car with a tight-lipped smile. He closed the door behind him, squeezing his eyes shut in absolute mortification and stepped on the curb with what was left of his dignity. He planned to crawl into his hole of an apartment, pray that Bucky was already asleep so he wouldn’t be grilled for the details of the night’s festivities, and quietly die of embarrassment.

“Hey Steve?” Tony called from within the car; the passenger side window was down.

“Yeah?”

“Under different circumstances, I would _definitely_ kiss you; no doubt about it,” Tony remarked with a mischievous smile. “But I think you’ve already had your fill of arrogant jackasses coming on to you for the night.”

Maybe, Steve became _just a little bit more_ in love with his fake boyfriend.

Tomorrow— _and Monday_ —couldn’t come fast enough. For the first time in weeks, he was actually looking forward to going to work!

 

 

 

**=====FIN=====**


End file.
